Travel with eBikes

Now that we've got these nice bikes and eBikes as listed on a prior page, what to do take them with us when travelling? Bikes are great, so we can handle the inevitable times when two of us want to go to one place and two to another within a few miles. Here are some of the readily available options we use to carry our bikes with us when we travel:

• Bike racks: typical bike rear "bumper mount" racks are great for local travel, but not so great for long distance. The ones we've had are marginally secure, and expose the bikes to all sorts of road debris.
• Car top carrier: next step up, better security, bit of a pain to use. We have one that worked with our old Saturn (boy do I miss that nice, compact, manual transmission car), Now we need to adapt to the Mercury Mariner hybrid.
• Bike cases: the folding bikes have soft cases, and two of them fit in a clamshell on top of the car, and those work when travelling by train but aren't really suited to airplane baggage handling. It does "restrict" us to the folding bikes, but heck how many families have 3 folding bikes, including an eFolder?
• Hard cases: one hard case that was roof rack mountable would allow one of the larger bikes to come with us places, and would be good when taking a non-folding eBike some distance away.
  • Ironcase, avail on Craig's list every now and then for ~$100. $115 or so to ship UPS, each way!
  • Dahon hard case is specially equipped for folders. Unfortunately at least $250!
  • Each of above is heavy when loaded, need an external carrier such as this from Northern Tool for a trailer hitch fitting, approx $70.
  
  

Travel with long wheelbase Bikes

Some friends got a wonderful Yuba elMundo offered at our churchauction in spring 2011. This is a dream bike for those who really want to do their errands by bicycle! When they got this eBike, the new owners asked for some advice on carrying the thing around. This is an interesting problem; I had no idea that for extra large bikes, the rack options are far more limited, and pricey! The Mundo needs a tandem rack, the Yuba web site recommends this wonderful, but expensive option:
http://www.rockymounts.com/TandemMount_R4_p/0512.htm

A great reference for long wheelbase bikes, such as tandem bicycles is here:
http://www.tandem-bicycle-central.com/bicycle-rack.html

I did talk with a few people at our pool who are triathletes. One has this easy loading hitch based solution, and reference this rack:
http://www.hitchsource.com/draftmaster-hitch-bike-rack-specialty-p-27198.html

Another rather pricey solution, found from a few places online for about $550. The other two use a plain roof rack for their oversize (recumbant) bikes and get another person to assist. I have a Thule (or it may be a Yakima brand) bike rail mount that fits on a roof rack like this one:
http://www.backcountry.com/thule-echelon-roof-bike-mount?AID=10279061&PID=3166542

References

1. WS Family collection of information on Personal Electric Vehicles (PEVs) and 3 wheel vehicles
2. Mark's search for the right PEV
3. Giant Lite has many references on this Pedelecs BB
4. Current version of Giant Lite, Giant Twist, featured on many sites including ElectricVehiclesNW
5. Facebook group: Central NC EVers and eBikers
6. Short history of bicycle helments, note Snell history